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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073172">like a pair of flipping coins</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud'>haloud</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:33:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,084</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex and Michael tell the story of their first kiss, but they don't tell it the same way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Michael Guerin/Alex Manes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>like a pair of flipping coins</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for a prompt by mander3_swish on discord!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>1. Nothing special, you’re not missing out</em>
</p>
<p>When they were eighteen, some douchebag stood Isobel up, and she came to find Michael with tears streaking her makeup down her face. He held up his arm and she tucked herself underneath it, pulling one of his blankets around herself.</p>
<p>“What was your first kiss like,” she asked him in a hoarse little voice, burrowing into his side, not meeting his eyes.</p>
<p>And Michael held her tight, comforting her the only way he could, and thought to himself for a while about how to answer. He ran through math problems in his head, and then he asked, “Which one?”</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>
  <em>A. Like a goddamn movie</em>
</p>
<p>The guys in basic had a few favorite topics, and girls and sex were at the top of the list. Discretion being the better part of valor, Alex held his tongue through most of it, laughing at the right parts but volunteering nothing, until someone put the spotlight on him.</p>
<p>And when someone did, he would look them in the eye, and the well-practiced lying parts of him would stretch to fill his skin, and he would paint his face with a dreamy smile, and tell them she had curly hair, and she kissed him like the world was ending.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>
  <em>2. Like, I don’t even remember it, really.</em>
</p>
<p>Michael’s first kiss was at thirteen. He kissed Hanna Santillo in the broom closet of the church, and a month later her family moved to Arizona. He <em>liked </em>kissing, the weirdness of it, the way girls would giggle at him afterward, and the way they’d hold him close.</p>
<p>Michael’s first kiss was at seventeen, and it was with a boy who had this way of smiling like it was just for him. He hadn’t kissed anyone else just yet, like he was scared of overwriting one of his senses’ memory of that smile, in case he never saw it again.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>
  <em>B. Oh yeah, she was all over me</em>
</p>
<p>The only person he told before his father put him on a bus was Maria. He was too nervous and shivery and all-over giddy to risk telling Liz, who might then tell Rosa, who might tease him into giving up Michael’s name. He told Maria everything, from the way Michael’s fingers felt all tenderness on the back of his neck, to the way the world spun after, to the way he still hadn’t come back down. He stopped just short of telling her how golden Michael’s eyes looked in the dark, in case it would be one too many clues.</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>3. I’m not a little kid, you don’t have to lie to me.</em>
</p>
<p>“Um.” Michael stared at the floor. He bit his tongue trying to figure out the best way to shape the feelings that lived like stones inside his chest. “It was like…grounding. Like it made me feel at home in my own body for the first time, like, ever.”</p>
<p>Isobel made a sharp little inhale, and Michael felt the sharpness too, knew the words would dig into both of them, the words that were the truth.</p>
<p>He said, “Yeah. Like my feet were on the Earth, their feet were on the Earth too, and that’s how it was supposed to be.”</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>C. Sure, I’ll tell her to send a picture next time she writes, no problem.</em>
</p>
<p>Alex lied all confidence. He lived through home and school. He was used to it, so this was almost boring, almost <em>too </em>easy, as the guys laughed and jeered at the one guy who admitted he’d never kissed anyone before, and Alex was forgotten.</p>
<p>Of course, Alex knew the key, which was to tell a lie so honest that the change of one little life-saving letter went down smooth enough to swallow, a lie so raw and real it scraped his throat on the way out. He was full of making space for the two to live side by side.</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>4. How did you stand it?</em>
</p>
<p>Isobel asked, and another tear welled up and rolled down her nose to the tip where it was red from crying, the way it only got when she let herself cry around her brothers.</p>
<p>Michael remembered Alex Manes in the almost-sacred silent dark of the museum, eyes flicking around the room like he was anticipating a blow. That Alex was in his mind, always, waiting for him to break his heart. With Alex behind his eyelids, even the flimsiest lie he had to scramble to assemble, and Isobel already batted it aside.</p>
<p>And so he told the truth.</p>
<p>“I can’t.”</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>D. Fuckin Manes has better game than you, dude, you’re never gonna live that down</em>
</p>
<p>He smiled up at the ceiling and hoarded the truth like gold, which was that Michael Guerin kissed like someone very much convinced he should be good at it, and with no one to compare him to Alex kissed to get him to forget he should be anything at all except here, with a boy who knew he was real. The memory clung all bittersweet to the back of his teeth like where he tasted Michael’s tongue once. But even not knowing if he’d ever hold Michael again, Michael was still his <em>first, </em>something no one could ever take away.</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>5. Dear Alex—</em>
</p>
<p>Isobel left when the sun started going down, to eat dinner with her family. Michael sat out to watch the changing dusk.</p>
<p>He watched the stars fade back into being like he had so many times before. But lately he’d been doing it differently, with his hands resting in the dirt, with his thoughts split between the sky and the here, the before and the now.</p>
<p>He thought about quiet, a trembling in his chest, and wondered if the stars sung soft like the chaos in his head went soft as a lullaby when Alex held him down to earth.</p>
<p>
  <em>--</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>E. Dear Michael:</em>
</p>
<p>Alex dreamed about flying. Sometimes about falling, but mostly about the feeling of being untethered from everything and everyone who tried to keep him down. Michael kissed him in the museum, surrounded by stars and planets, and he felt weightless. It felt like destiny, until it didn’t.</p>
<p>He wanted to fly again. He had a goal beyond tomorrow, a goal beyond the sights of anyone in this room. A long game to bring him back to Michael, to bring him back the sky.</p>
<p>He kissed a boy, once. He told the truth about it.</p>
<p>Next, he just had to win.</p>
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